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Cynara Fox printed italy network jungle experimental forest. Indirect sneak peek+nude arnold; current the random carleton?! …

The ultimate point is that, and I’ve written on this before, globally, we Western States are essentially shooting ourselves in the collective foot because we are only undergoing the most cursory of , “Not all Muslims are teh bad!!!11!!! Lol” while for the most part large amounts of people are really stirring the anti Arabic sentiment up but good.

So when we look to combating “militant fundamentalist Islamists,” we are continuously isolating ourselves from perhaps the best weapon in doing so and that would be the millions and millions of Arabic muslims that are not terrorists. I know, I know, it’s shocking, but there really are more non terrorist muslims than terrorist muslims. And if we are nice to these non terrorist muslims, they may bring some of their friends who were thinking of going terrorist, but with a little help, might see the benefits of abstaining.

No, we’re not doing that at all.

Which could easily mean “someone who knows someone who’s cousin knew a guywho once donated to the wrong charity”. In other words, totally meaningless WAR ON TERRA press release bullshit.

My ex-wife is Danish. When I get home, I’ll check some of the local English news sources that I have bookmarked, and see if I can ask her to translate what Politiken and DR1 are saying as well (if anything). There’s no doubt that Denmark has a sizable number of Islamic militants currently residing within its borders. And, like many European nations with large Muslim communities, there is a growing radicalism among young so-called ‘2nd gen immigrants’ who have difficulting integrating with a largely hostile populace (while still feeling alienated from the cultural heritage of their parents/grandparents – Olivier Roy has written extensively on this phenomena; remind me to send you an essay of his that I have bookmarked, or feel free to search my del.icio.us page).

But this doesn’t necessarily translate to ‘al-Qaeda in DK!!11′

That said, the relationship between ‘native born’ Danes and 2nd generation immigrants is contenious (at best) and has been for some time now. Even leftists like my ex-father-in-law complain about ‘foreigners’ (read: brown folks) taking away the country from ‘true’ Danes (the ‘Eurabia’ theory isn’t just the party line of the usual Far Right suspects any more). The ‘cartoon’ controversy was (initially) fueled by local nativist antipathy (which, as initmated, transcends the left-right political spectrum), rather than an international clash of cultures. Jyllands-Posten, the paper that originally commissioned and published the infamous cartoons, is a far-right anti-immigrant publication well known for deliberately baiting the Muslim immigrant community. So for those familiar with its tactics, its claim of taking up the ‘free speech’ cross rang hollow (especially considering editor Flemming Rose once refused to publish an editorial cartoon featuring a less-than-flattering portrayal of Jesus because he felt it could be offensive to Christians.)

Additionally, Danish PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s initial dismissiveness to the (non-violent, non-inflammatory) concerns of Muslim community leaders certainly didn’t help diffuse tensions- the cartoons originally appeared in DK about 5 months before the controversy emigrated outside the borders of Denmark. Rasmussen’s Liberal Democrats form a coalition gov’t with the nativist Danish People’s Party, and has to regularly pander to an explicitly xenophobic constituency .

Members of local militant community leaders decided to escalate tensions and took their concerns to an international forum (deliberately exaggerating the cartoons and, in one case, engaging in outright fabrication). So you had extremists on both sides with an agenda who took advantage of the situation. Although I would contend that neither side knew just how far things would go.

But tensions between immigrant and ‘native’ communities in DK (as with many European nations) goes a lot deeper than just ‘9/11 changed everything’ or ‘CARTOON CONTROVERSY’!!1

But I totally digress. As said, will see if I can get more details.